In the Georgia Governor & # 39; s Race is the game Black Votes – The Atlantic

In the postponement of the election, the Abrams campaign tells me that they have a strong focus on mobilizing low-frequency voters – not necessarily on the injection of new voters on roles that the New Georgia Project tried, or that & # 39; exact match & # 39; is at risk. But the campaign released a press release on Thursday in which Kemp was indicted, the exact match & # 39; policy was called and he was called upon to step down as secretary of state to eliminate possible conflicts of interest. "As he has been doing for years," says the press release, "Brian Kemp swings evilly the power to suppress the votes for political gain and to silence the voices of thousands of eligible voters, the majority of people in color. cords. "

In the big picture, the number of people that may be hampered by the exact match policy is relatively small – although the thin margins of the current polls and the potential election results make every potential advantage significant. But there is more to it than just the policy. In fact, "exact match" is often merged with other voter purification schemes that work in the opposite direction, with registered voters being moved from the roles due to differences. While removing unsuitable names from roles is important to keep them accurate and safe, investigations into purges have shown that they often uniquely disadvantage black voters, irregular voters, and people who move often.

"There are two problems that reinforce each other," says Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice. "The first is that a huge number of voters is being cleaned, period." In a letter issued earlier this month, the Brennan Center discovered that between 2010, when Kemp started his mandate, and 2014, Georgia's purification rate rose from 6.7 to 10.7. per cent. Since then, the annual treatment percentages have remained stable at around 10 percent of all registrations.

The peak in purges came not only during the Kemp tenure, but also after the important decision of the Supreme Court of 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder, which rejected the federal enforcement of the law on voting rights and essentially put an end to federal proactive restrictions on state and local voting policy that were intended to be discriminatory or disproportionately lawless colored citizens. According to the Brennan Center, "Georgia has won twice as many voters between the 2012 and 2016 elections – 1.5 million as between 2008 and 2012."

According to Pérez, the effects of mass electoral cleansing not only remove eligible voters and make it more difficult to vote, but they can also combat education and mobilization efforts designed specifically to catch black voters. "In my mind comes the real deprivation of liberty before the people even get on the rollers," Pérez told me. Voter roles are a basic data set for persuasion campaigns for likely voters and for campaigns for & # 39; get out of the voice & # 39; that target registered voters to show them. "There is a body of evidence that encourages such forms of people to come out," Pérez said. "If you're not really on the rollers, you do not get that kind of engagement, so you have people who are not involved in such a way because they're blocked. & # 39;